90 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
5.5 KiB
Plaintext
Beliefs of a Pagan Polytheist...To His Rabbinical Student Friend...
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Although the Source of Being underlies all that is, it is essentially
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unmanifest and without qualities in the usual sense,and per se cannot
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be the object of religion. However, in answer to human spiritual need,
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it manifests in form as human deities. These are AS IF objective and
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independent gods and goddesses. I acknowledge that the component of
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the human mind is part of the process, but the fact that these deities
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may spring in part from the collective unconscious or Jung's
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archetypes does not obscure their status as deific entities which
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serve as the focus for the individual's spiritual life, and which do
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so as effectively AS IF they were what they seem to be....I do not
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find profit or point in debating what anything "IS" beyond what I can
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experience it to be...I find comfort in a Source generous and loving
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enough to appear in the guise which serves best to help me in my quest
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to love Goddess or God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, and
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my neigbor as non-different from me in esseence.
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It would take a really dense polytheist to insist that there is
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only One Right Way....that's authoritarian monotheism in thin
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disguise...but it would take an insane polytheist to believe that
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there is more than one "ground of all being"--- contradictory by
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definition..HOWEVER (CRITICAL POINT AHEAD!): pagan polytheism is more
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than "many masks of the One God"...These deities we experience really
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are indistinguishable in practice from MANY, and so we treat them as
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such.....The spiritual experience involved "doesn't happen" otherwise.
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Note, though: the Wiccans who believe in a Mother Goddess and a
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Nature God realize that the highest mystical experiences lies in the
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two becoming one...But this does not deny the separateness in a
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reductionist way. As perceived and experienced within a rich and real
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spiritual life, the Two are two.....But just as the material Earth and
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its growing life are non-separate, so every year we experience in the
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cycle of the seasons the manifestation of the polar principles uniting
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to become the one manifest world of life and nature. It is precisely
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because we perceive the Two functioning as separate entities that the
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vision of unity is so mysterious (in the good technical sense) and
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ineffable, and moves us so. For some people, me for example, it is
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only through a real and ineffable union of Two that are really
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separate that the Oneness becomes a numinous and mystical fact instead
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of a numerical datum.
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There is a theology, or for a Goddess-worshipper, "thealogy", that
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can articulate all this in better and more formal language, but I hope
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something got across...Of COURSE the unmanifest Source is not-two (NOT
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the same as ONE!), but what is absolutely unmanifest is too close to
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being really "NOT" for humans. So the Ground Of Deity (note the
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acronym!) is quite happy to manifest as Real Gods to meet human
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spiritual needs, with a bit of co-operation from the human psyche, and
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would in theory gladly emerge as, ACTUALLY, Klukk the great Chicken-
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God if that's what it took to integrate worshippers into loving unity
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with one another and the world and the divine.
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Just be sure you realize that, just as a Krishna worshipper REALLY
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does encounter Krishna and a Christian REALLY has an experience of the
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Christos, a pagan can actually experience deity within as a loving,
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beautiful feminine Presence of unmistakeable reality and cosmic scale-
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--indistinguishable from ANYONE ELSE'S mystical experience only in
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form. Since operationally and experientially the goddesses and gods
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are in no way distinguishable from what one would experience in the
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instance of "they really exist", we pragmatically say that they really
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do...Any other assumption abolishes the numinous mystical
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experience.....And since my root assumption is that this experience is
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the ultimate point and goal of any non-trivial religion, I am a
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polytheist. Being one gives me a simple explanation for the fact, and
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it is a fact, that Jews and Christians and Muslims and Hindus, and ad
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infinitum, ALL report mystical unions/apotheoses/epiphanies of a real
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meeting with a real deity....Their interpretation of this universal
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fact leads them, usually, to the conclusion that they finally have
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personal proof that they are right and all the others are deluded. My
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pagan polytheist view is that they are all non-deluded: that, out of
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the Unmanifest or (pardon the plagiarism/blasphemy) Ain Soph arise
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Real Deities who, from all appearances, have an independent existence
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apart from the observer/worshipper. Out of an unseen and featureless
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Void, pregnant with Being, Love and Consciousness unexpressed, all of
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us get what we need.
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To voice this paradoxical fact that there are Many at the same time
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that there is Unity requires one to tread as carefully as a student of
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Kabalah dealing with Emanations as not effecing the Oneness...I can't
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do it on that high a level, but I hope I communicated something.
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There are the "play Pagans" and the "shock their parents" pagans,
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but most of us, for all our glaring faults, have found in our faith an
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approach to that ineffable experience behind all religions that works
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for us as no other has....and which integrates it into our lives, and
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our lives into our world in loving and compassionate manner as no
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other way has....
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Shalom, Blessed Be, and may the great Gee Whiz take a likin' to ya...
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Raven Dragonrune
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